The typical response I get from people when I tell them I work with the homeless community is tragically revealing. It usually goes something like, "well, why don't they just go out and get a job? Then they wouldn't be homeless." 🙃
I won't go into how silly that response is here, but suffice it to say that homelessness is a very complex (usually systemic) problem that my friends and I probably won't solve in my lifetime. But hopefully, we can teach the next generation that God cares deeply about those who are stuck in cycles of poverty, those on the outskirts, those who are marginalized, and those who are homeless - and because He does, we must too. If you've spent a few minutes in the Bible, you should know that the Scriptures are certainly not silent about this issue. Maybe we can just start with the fact that - I don’t know - God’s people were homeless for 40 years. They wandered in a desert and slept outside. If the story of God’s people through history is a narrative, this is a huge part of the narrative: the formative time that God's people were homeless wanderers. They would have had nothing at all if God hadn’t provided it for them. He provided food (manna) from the sky. They carried their possessions from place to place as they wandered around – they were homeless, poor, and needy. We could talk about how Jesus himself was a homeless person. Jesus told those who wanted to follow him, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20, also in Luke). Luke casually mentions that Jesus slept outside every night. “Every day Jesus went to the Temple to teach, and each evening he returned to spend the night on the Mount of Olives. The crowds gathered at the Temple early each morning to hear him" (Luke 21:37-38). We do often hear of Jesus staying in friends’ homes, but we never hear about him owning anything (except the clothes on his back that the Roman guards cast lots for when he was dying on the cross).
Jesus likely trained as a carpenter, because that was the trade of his father. Yet, during the years of his ministry, there’s no evidence that he worked in his trade to provide for himself or his mother. It all just makes me wonder if people looked at him too and just thought, "wow, I wish this guy would just get a job already and stop wandering around our streets!"
Regardless of what people thought, Jesus depended on his Heavenly Father to provide and allowed his followers/friends to care for his needs.
When call ourselves Christians, we’re talking about a faith that proclaims a homeless Savior. A man who had nothing to his name and slept outside and very likely didn’t have a job. That’s Jesus.
I have to believe that the issue of homelessness is close to God’s heart. So, how does He respond? 1. God responds with compassion. Psalm 72:13 AMP says, “He will have compassion on the poor and needy, and he will save the lives of the needy.” God always responds with compassion to the needy, the homeless, the poor, the wanderer, and the foreigner. You can read this overwhelmingly throughout the scriptures (here's a short list). God responds with compassion to those who are in need, and He commands Israel (His people) to do the same, over and over. God has such compassion for the poor that when Israel is becoming a new, weird, theocratic covenantal nation, God specifically includes a number of laws that require them to take care of their poor. (But this is a blog in itself for another time!) In Deuteronomy 15:11, God says, “There will always be some in the land who are poor. That is why I am commanding you to share freely with the poor and with other Israelites in need.” The word compassion, when used in the Old Testament, is usually the Hebrew word rakhum. It’s closely related to the Hebrew word for womb, which is rekhem. What this tells us about the word compassion is that it could be similar to the feeling that a mother has for an infant in her womb or a baby who has just been born - that tender feeling of protection and love for a vulnerable child that can't fend for themselves (as a new mom, I know it well!). This is how God feels about the poor and needy: compassion. 2. God responds with empathy. Empathy means being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and attempt to feel what they’re feeling. When I talk with friends who are homeless, I try to put myself in their shoes. Imagine not having a warm place to sleep, no place to shower, no place to unwind, no place to cook food, no place to keep your belongings. God didn’t have to imagine this. He lived it. Jesus was a homeless person. He went through this. Hebrews 2 tells us that Jesus went through every trial and suffering so that he is able to help us when we go through the same things. God became one of us, human, - and was homeless himself. This is the truest example of empathy. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Compassion and empathy come before anything we respond to as Christians. Issues are first dealt with in our heart because they can be handled with our hands. Nehemiah is great example of this - scripture says that he heard about Jerusalem and sat down and mourned and fasted and prayed about it for days. He allowed his heart to be broken (and went on to lead an incredible effort to rebuild the city). If you want to make a difference in any realm, it starts with your heart - compassion and empathy. 3. God responds through His people. God’s people are part of His solution to the brokenness in the world. Humans are often the agents of God’s work. All throughout the Scriptures, God works through people to rescue other people. Moses frees the people from slavery. Ultimately, God does the freeing, true - but God does it through Moses and Aaron. God allows them to be part of His rescue mission. And God becomes a human, Jesus, to be our rescue from ourselves. And now, through being joined with Jesus and God’s Spirit, we can continue to be God’s agents of His work in the world to bring restoration and wholeness to the world. This is our job now - Christ lives in us. He already came – and He is coming again – but for now, God invites us to be part of His restoration work he is doing in the world. St. Teresa of Avila, a church leader in the 1500s, wrote this - “Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with Compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” God works through His people. He moves individuals, churches, and communities to make a difference. This is how Israel (God’s people) are supposed to be known throughout history. God frequently has to remind them of this (take Isaiah 58 or Matthew 25 as examples) - that their job is not to solely be focused on prayer, fasting, and singing, but to "let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless" (Isaiah 58:6-7). Our response has to mirror God's response. His response is more compassion and less judgment, more kindness and less complacency. "The poor and homeless are desperate for water, their tongues parched and no water to be found. But I’m there to be found, I’m there for them, and I, God of Israel, will not leave them thirsty.” Isaiah 41:17 MSG Let's do the same.
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